


something so precious about this

by The_IPRE



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: the world gets to be a lot, sometimes. it's nice to have someone be there with you
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21
Collections: The Candlenights Zone (2019 Exchange)





	something so precious about this

**Author's Note:**

> A late candlenights gift for [jihyxnkim](https://jihyxnkim.tumblr.com/)

Barry should sleep.

He knew that he should just _sleep,_ he was tired and his eyes burned when they stayed open for more than a second, but something kept him awake. Even as he lay in his bed, Lup tucked in his arms and snoring, his mind wouldn’t settle long enough that he could let himself enjoy the moment.

With a sigh that raised and lowered Lup’s head where it rested against his chest, Barry shifted her so that she lay flat against the bed and peeled back the covers, shivering at the chill of the ship as he pulled himself to sit up at the edge of the bed.

Despite everything, there were still times that none of it felt real.

All the cycles were hard enough to parse, year after year of disappearing worlds, but that wasn’t what got him.

What really got to Barry, sitting there in the hollow dark with his glasses still closed on the bedside table, was that Lup was there with him.

They had danced around each other for so long that when they finally figured things out they already knew how to fit together, but that she was there in his bed, that he could listen to her breathing and know that she would be there when he woke up, it was more than he could handle, sometimes.

With a sigh, he stood up, leaving his glasses where they lay. He’d lived on the Starblaster for fifty years, he could navigate it well enough even with blurry vision.

He padded to the door, careful not to wake Lup up with the brush of socked feet across the metal floor. There was the snick of the door closing behind him, and then he was off. 

Even with all of the noise of thoughts in his head that kept him from sleeping, none of them were comprehensible. He just kept chasing himself round and round, cycling in that space of having finally found something that could be broken but not knowing what to do about that fact, and he found himself in the kitchen once again.

He wasn’t a cook – that was the twin’s area of expertise and he could never presume to overstep – but he wasn’t too shabby at making a cup of tea.

One of those things where, if you do it every day for fifty years, you end up getting pretty good at it.

He pulled down a mug, one from a past cycle that Lup had gotten him with the words _Don’t Talk To Me Until I’ve Had My Bones_ written on the side – it was a baffling find at an equally baffling market, one that was long gone – and Barry treasured it.

As he set the kettle to boiling, he tried not to think about how lonely a tightly packed ship could feel.

He pulled down a rusty old cookie tin and plucked a tea bag from it, forced the lid closed and tucked it away. Repeating motions that he had done hundreds of times before, except now there was one less tea bag from a world that only seven people remembered.

Barry shivered, socked feet against the metal floor not enough to protect him from the chill.

Then there were arms around Barry’s waist and he froze, years of running from evil lords and every bit as dangerous pranks from Magnus and Taako catching up to him, but then a forehead came to rest between his shoulder blades like it had always been there and he let his muscles relax.

“Hey,” Barry said, resting his hands on Lup’s where they held his stomach. “Did I wake you up?”

“Nah, I was just trancing.” Lup’s voice was smudged around the edges from just having woken up. She turned, pressing her ear against his back, and the warmth of her through the thin cotton of his shirt was a grounding point in that cold kitchen.

Barry knew that he was smiling, a sappy sort of expression that would have Taako throwing the nearest makeshift projectile. He didn’t really care. “I didn’t know that you could snore while trancing.”

“Learn something new every day, babe. Or night, in this case.” There was a pause as Lup yawned, and Barry pulled out the teabag and placed it in his mug, doing what he could to look like he was being productive without moving from his spot. Other than the settling of the sachet into the mug or the ceramic on the cold counter top the small room was quiet, and then Lup’s breath danced across his shoulder blade. “Are you okay?”

“I’m- I’m better now that you’re here.” 

Lup must have been able to feel the expansion and contractions of his lungs, hear the sound of his heart, and she still just rested against him, arms in an embrace that knew he wasn’t going to disappear. “Not really an answer.”

Barry sighed, and then he was saved from having to translate all of his thoughts into words by the growing whistle of the kettle. He stepped forward to pull it from the stove, feeling Lup step with him, and as he poured his tea it felt like they were dancing. There was a _clink_ as he set the kettle down again, but it didn't seem so loud now that the noises of Lup being alive took up space in the room as well.

“It’s- argh.” Barry blew out a breath, holding his mug between his hands and feeling warm, letting the heat of the ceramic against his palms and the pressure of Lup’s body around him melt away the fog cluttering his mind. “It’s all just a lot.”

Lup nodded against his back, pressed a kiss there against the worn cotton. “I get it.”

“Fifty years…” Barry lifted his mug and blew across the top, watching the blurry steam curl and fade into the air. 

“It’s a long time.”

Barry nodded. He didn’t have the words, he wasn’t good with words, he was good with his numbers and his research and his figuring-the-big-things-out. With Lup, maybe he didn’t have to have the words. She just held on, gentle and trusting and sleep-soft around the edges, and he knew he didn’t have to keep talking, but he wanted to.

His voice rasped and he cleared his throat, letting his words hang quiet in the air. “It’s- uh, not exactly funny, but, you know. Kind of interesting. I should be dead. Many times over.” There were all those deaths that he had gotten dragged back from, but there was also all of those extra years that he never should have gotten in the first place. He was ninety-seven, if you were to count it all up, and he didn’t look it but some days he felt it aching in his bones and his chest and the deep parts of his mind.

Barry hoped his tea was cool enough to drink, and he took a sip as Lup spoke against his back. “I’m glad you’re not.” Her voice was still hers, all the warmth of a hearth fire with just as much of the light, but it was soft, too. Soft like a body at his back, holding him through a sleep shirt, hands gentle against his middle.

“Me too.” He took another sip, feeling warmth seep against the back of his ribs as he put the mug down. Moisture gathered against the metal counter where the ceramic touched it, and he placed his hands over Lup’s, linking their fingers. 

Standing there, Lup warm at his back and tea warm in his stomach and hands fitting so neatly against his own, the world narrowed down to the sensation of being held. 

Barry closed his eyes and let the world settle around him.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on tumblr at [the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


End file.
